<ARTICLES>De-familialization of Childcare in a Familialistic Welfare State: A Comparative Research Study of Childcare Policies in Japan and Italy

This study aims to investigate how the burden of childcare is distributed in Italian and Japanese societies. Childcare is an issue where the public and private policymaking spheres often overlap and clash. On the one hand, childcare is a private issue and can be interpreted as a form of free labor in which the childcare burden is mostly carried by women - stressing the inequalities often present in the division of household chores. On the other hand, the topic of childcare is also a heavily politicized matter where finding the right balance between access to family-provided and publicly provided childcare is a challenge. Italy and Japan are both good examples of countries where family-provided childcare has, historically, been the most prevalent and they have, therefore, been categorized in much previous research as having `familialistic' welfare regimes - defined as representing a policy system in which the family takes the primary responsibility for family well-being. In contrast, changes over the past decades suggest a large-scale trend towards `de-familialization', as more childcare options are provided by the market and public services are used to help reduce the family burden. However, the analytical framework applied to the assessment of care needs in the context of modern welfare regimes has often proven to be insufficient, and further study is required on the effects of `de-familialization'. In order to help describe the transition and assess the reasons behind the movement from the `familialistic' system towards `de-familialization' that occurred between the 1990s and the 2010s, OECD data from the Family Database and historical data on the Family Policy in Japan and Italy was analyzed. The results indicate that, in both countries, while parental leave systems have expanded and become more widely available to parents and carers alike, the degree of access provided to childcare-providing facilities still does not satisfy demand. These findings support the hypothesis that the way in which current welfare regimes are categorized may need to be reconsidered categorization of current welfare regimes is changing